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- The Dictator: Porfirio Diaz. You can’t have a revolution without something to rebel against. Porfirio Diaz had kept an iron grip on power in Mexico since 1876.
- The Ambitious One: Fernando I. Madero. Madero, the ambitious son of a wealthy family, challenged the elderly Diaz in the 1910 elections. Things were looking good for him, too, until Diaz had him arrested and stole the election.
- The Idealist: Emiliano Zapata. Zapata was a poor, barely-literate peasant from the state of Morelos. He was furious with the Diaz regime, and in fact, had already taken up arms long before Madero’s call for revolution.
- Drunk With Power: Victoriano Huerta. Huerta, a raging alcoholic, was one of Diaz’ former generals and an ambitious man in his own right. He served Diaz in the early days of the revolution and then stayed on when Madero took office.
- Overview
- Origins of the Mexican Revolution
- The Madero regime
Mexican Revolution, (1910–20), a long and bloody struggle among several factions in constantly shifting alliances which resulted ultimately in the end of the 30-year dictatorship in Mexico and the establishment of a constitutional republic.
The revolution began against a background of widespread dissatisfaction with the elitist and oligarchical policies of Porfirio Díaz that favoured wealthy landowners and industrialists. When Díaz in 1908 said that he welcomed the democratization of Mexican political life and appeared ambivalent about running for his seventh reelection as president in 1910, Francisco Madero, an idealistic liberal from an upper-class family, emerged as the leader of the Antireeleccionistas and announced his candidacy. Díaz had him arrested and declared himself the winner after a mock election in June, but Madero, released from prison, published his Plan de San Luis Potosí from San Antonio, Texas, calling for a revolt on November 20.
The revolt was a failure, but it kindled revolutionary hope in many quarters. In the north,Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa mobilized their ragged armies and began raiding government garrisons. In the south, Emiliano Zapata waged a bloody campaign against the local caciques (rural political bosses). In the spring of 1911 the revolutionary forces took Ciudad Juárez, forced Díaz to resign, and declared Madero president.
Madero’s regime faltered from the start. He proved to be a somewhat ineffectual chief executive and disappointed most of his followers by failing to recognize the need for economic changes. Nevertheless, he was a sincere believer in constitutional government, and labour and peasant groups were now free to demand reforms. Notably, Zapata turned against Madero, angered at his failure to effect the immediate restoration of land to dispossessed Native Americans. Orozco, initially a supporter of Madero, was dissatisfied with the slow pace of reform under the new government and led a revolutionary movement in the north.
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In the meantime, U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson became an outspoken enemy of the Madero administration, and the U.S. government then turned against the new president, fearing that he was too conciliatory to the rebel groups and concerned about the threat that civil war in Mexico was posing to American business interests there. Tensions reached a peak when yet another faction of rebel forces, led by Félix Díaz (the former dictator’s nephew), clashed with federal troops in Mexico City under the command of Victoriano Huerta. On February 18, 1913, after the ninth day of that melee (known as La Decena Trágica, or “The Ten Tragic Days”), Huerta and Díaz met in Ambassador Wilson’s office and signed the so-called “Pact of the Embassy,” in which they agreed to conspire against Madero and to install Huerta as president. Huerta assumed the presidency the following day, after arresting Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, both of whom were shot a few days later, presumably on Huerta’s orders, while being transferred from one prison to another.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920.
Nov 9, 2009 · The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, ended dictatorship in Mexico and established a constitutional republic. A number of groups, led by revolutionaries including Francisco Madero,...
Jan 23, 2023 · 1. The First Leader of the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero. The Mexican Revolution officially began on the 20th of November, after an attempt for fair and democratic elections had failed just months earlier. The date of the uprising was set by the Plan de San Luis, a revolutionary manifesto published by Francisco I. Madero.
The Mexican Revolution was the first major social revolution of the 20th century. Its causes included, among others, the authoritarian rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz, the seizure of millions of acres of indigenous village lands by wealthy hacendados and foreign investors, and the growing divide between the rich and the poor.
Jul 20, 1998 · Pancho Villa (born June 5, 1878, Hacienda de Río Grande, San Juan del Río, Durango, Mexico—died July 20, 1923, Parral, Chihuahua) was a Mexican revolutionary and guerrilla leader who fought against the regimes of both Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta and after 1914 engaged in civil war and banditry.
